Philippines

Continuing with a mini post on Christmas showing off our souvenir ornaments we picked up in 2017. It’s a fun tradition Brian and I started way back when we first started traveling and it’s fun to try and seek out an ornament everywhere we go. Sometimes it’s easy and other times it’s harder. Sometimes it’s an actual ornament we find, other times it’s something we can turn into an ornament once we get home.

I almost forgot that I hadn’t published this yet, so oops. It’s a bit later than normal upon return from a trip. Palawan was a place I had pushed to the top of my travel list about a year ago and the timing of our trips this year, made it perfect timing to visit. We hadn’t done a relaxing beach vacation for a long time, as it’s not our favorite type of trip, but relaxing for a week was amazing. It’s a beautiful island and incredibly affordable and while busy, there are plenty of ways to avoid the crowds

We are headed off to our first beach vacation in years and only our second trip to Southeast Asia. I saw a picture of the Bacuit Bay about a year ago and after never hearing of Palawan before, it jumped to the top of the list. Maybe the ocean was calling us. And ironically on what should be our most relaxing trip without a lot of preplanned activities, I am more stressed out than ever pre-trip. Lots of odds and ends have contributed to that feeling of dread. I’ve worked a terrible amount of hours at work lately which makes me feel like I’m rushed in trying to make sure everything is ready. Secondly, my dogs GPS collar stopped working last night and while I completely trust our pet sitter, having the tracker just adds a peace of mind when we are at home and away. And now we are frantically trying to get a replacement tracker on a holiday weekend. Which hopefully we finally have figured out and will arrive before this post is published, but it still only gives us 24 hours to figure it out and be able to explain to the pet sitter how to use it!